Past pandemics are in our genes Carl Zimmer | Slate | 6 December 2012"To understand what it means to be human, you have to understand koalas," says Carl Zimmer. "Or, to be more precise, you have to understand how they are dying from a bizarre viral outbreak that has been raging for the past 150 years or so." Such viruses have helped make us what we are today.

Larry Page on Google Miguel Helft | Fortune | 11 December 2012A conversation with Google's CEO. "My job is mostly getting people not to think about our competition. There's a tendency for people to think about the things that exist. Our job is to think of the thing you haven't thought of yet that you really need"

Invasion of the cyber hustlers Steven Poole | New Statesman | 6 December 2012 Many of us enjoy reading future-of-media bloggers like Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen or Clay Shirky. But not Steven Poole. He attacks them as internet "booster gurus" and "little Pol Pots of the touchscreen and Twitter... They agitate for constant revolution. The main beneficiaries will be the giant technology companies before whose virtual image they prostrate themselves."

Bonus read: One of the great popularisers of astronomy, Sir Patrick Moore, died this week at the age of 89. Sir Patrick was well known to British television viewers over more than half a century and inspired thousands of us to take a closer interest in the stars. For those like me whose knowledge remains at the beginner stage, I thoroughly recommend this interview we did at The Browser with one of Sir Patrick's successors, Philip Plait, author of the Bad Astronomy blog. He told us about the wonders of the universe, and the best books to read on the subject.

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